8 Million Vericoin Hack Prompts Hard Fork to Recover Funds

Digital currency exchange platform MintPal has suffered a successful hack attack that resulted in the loss millions of vericoins from its hot wallet.

The hacker, according to an official statement from MintPal, was able to circumvent internal controls and authorize a withdrawal request for the contents of the vericoin wallet.

MintPal is an alternative digital currency exchange registered in the UK that trades bitcoin, litecoin and popular alternative currencies such as vericoin and darkcoin.

The breach resulted in the loss of roughly 8 million vericoins, or about 30% of the total coins in existence, a member of the vericoin development team told CoinDesk.

Given the extent of the damage, the vericoin development team opted to hard fork the coin's block chain in order to reverse the theft transaction.

The fork is now complete, with new wallets now available for download, the vericoin development team told CoinDesk.

Six hours later, the MintPal development team made contact with the vericoin team, after which time a solution - ultimately a hard fork - was sought and reached.

According to MintPal, only the vericoin wallet was affected during the attack.

An initial attempt to roll back the block chain to reverse the vericoin theft was launched in the hours after the attack, which involved recreating the original block chain without the withdrawal from MintPal.

According to vericoin developer Patrick Nosker, older clients that were broadcasting the transaction resulted in the network mistakenly approving it, allowing the hacker to receive the 8m VRC. A second hard fork was conducted on 14th July, an operation that also involved creating a transaction that moved the 8m VRC to a new wallet location.